For years my primary computer was a mac. I remember it was important for the windows and mac versions of ms office et all to have some degree of compatability. That said you should have seen what happened when MS made a mac version of Word that was too close (pretty much identical) to the win version. Every editor in every mac magazine practically sh*t a brick. "It takes forever to load", "It's ugly", "The interface is completely counterintuitive"... Let's just say that these are two cultures with very different views on product design, and I'll bet that most linux users feel the same way about their apps. So in short I think the lack of exact clones is a good thing, even if it means a small learning curve for new users.
Like the/. poll I realise that we aren't supposed to complain about the lack of choice here but I was hoping for an authentic imperial guard uniform (the guys in red that follow the emperor around). For that matter why are they auctioning off helmets without the rest of the uniform - there seems to be little point in holding onto stormtrooper uniform without the helmet. Not only do they not protect against anything, you can't even communicate with the other troopers.
Yeah, I just hate it when apple posts profits. Who do you think is getting that 29.95 for legal versions of quicktime pro? Apple would have absolutely no incentive to serve a highly popular file in mpg format.
When you get a hd its listed capacity is always greater than the actual space you get after formatting. This has always been the way. OTOH if the pre-formatting spec is 5*10^9 bytes and not 5*2^30 bytes then apple has got some splainin to do.
Following recent stories: As we all know free progs like linux are just "hackers' toys" and according to new legislation hacking is terrorism punishable by life in prison without possibility of trial. Therefore it would only make sense to outlaw free software. Welcome to the mind of a politician.
If the governments make use of strong encryption illegal they need to enforce it by checking users' mail for signs of encryption. I know of some computationally easy tests that allow you to get a pretty good idea if a number is prime(ie Fermat). So my question is: do such tests exist for PGP-encrypted documents?
Since the letter has already been published here (and most likely many other places by now) it does not meet the exclusivity(?) requirement and therefore would not be eligible for publication.
Construx was a great toy and it had no fancy AI programability or motors
I had a construx motor, I think my parents bought it seperately. It had a number of connectors on it's surface and 2 motorised wheels on each side (1 large, 1 small). There was a 3 state controller attached by a roughly 18" cable. And yes, I immediately used it to create a robot (although for some reason bipedal construx robots don't walk very well).
...before Clipper was a gleam in Bush Senior's eye
Actually Bush never really took a shining to clipper. The US three letter agencies knew this and therefore didn't really try to push it through until Gore was VP. (Pardon my nitpicking)
why not consider removing the doors to the cockpit of airplanes?
That works fine, until the pilot and copilot suddenly die of a heart attack and noone on board is able to save the plane. Sure it probably doesn't happen very often, but the first time it does everyone will cry foul.
We now have the army claiming P2P saves lives. Will the RIAA care? Will the MPAA care? Will the courts care? No. They didn't care about all the previous arguments in favour of P2P and they will be quick to dismiss this one. It doesn't matter how much good it does, if even 1 britney spears song gets through it threatens the economic balance of america.
The simple fact is the IOC doesn't give a flying duck if a given substance is legal in a given country. In some events athletes are banned from taking cough syrup and aspirin. It also doesn't really care if they are performance enhancing (quick name an event that you would do better in if you were on weed).
an invitation for a holy war. Perhaps next we should have a 'what's your favorite editor?' debate.
Re:What's the big deal with Pi?
on
Share The Pi!
·
· Score: 1
I can say pretty safely that you will indeed not find said sequence nearly so early.
Basic Number Theory:
There are 10 to the power of n different possible n digit long messages. A compression scheme needs to be able to map every possible message to another value. Assume this scheme produces an n-1 long compressed message. But there are only 10 to the power of (n-1) possible values of this length. Now any compressed msg would have to decompress to exactly 1 msg (would you want a program that gave you 30 different possible outputs?). That means that only 10% of messages can be compressed positively by any given scheme.
Schemes like LZW, Huffman etc. achieve positive compression only on certain very specific group of files with fairly predictable format(try compressing a DivX with winzip sometime if you don't believe me).
To think that some randomly chosen scheme would work well on any given input type is ludicrous at best.
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Re:What's the big deal with Pi?
on
Share The Pi!
·
· Score: 1
If I understand you correctly you want to send the start index and length of your msg as it appears in pi. I think its safe to assume that this would in fact be a longer than the msg itself.
Try writting out every 2 digit sequence (00..99)
Done? You should have 200 digits down. Now if you wanted to send the msg "99" you would send 197. That's an extra digit. When you start doing this for arbitrary length expressions the losses are going to get even worse.
Slashdot Mirror
For years my primary computer was a mac. I remember it was important for the windows and mac versions of ms office et all to have some degree of compatability. That said you should have seen what happened when MS made a mac version of Word that was too close (pretty much identical) to the win version. Every editor in every mac magazine practically sh*t a brick. "It takes forever to load", "It's ugly", "The interface is completely counterintuitive"... Let's just say that these are two cultures with very different views on product design, and I'll bet that most linux users feel the same way about their apps. So in short I think the lack of exact clones is a good thing, even if it means a small learning curve for new users.
Like the /. poll I realise that we aren't supposed to complain about the lack of choice here but I was hoping for an authentic imperial guard uniform (the guys in red that follow the emperor around). For that matter why are they auctioning off helmets without the rest of the uniform - there seems to be little point in holding onto stormtrooper uniform without the helmet. Not only do they not protect against anything, you can't even communicate with the other troopers.
Here we also have schools where people learn basic system intrusion techniques and run around acting "l33t". They're called high schools.
They don't seem to care about virus writers, unless there were a virus that caused CD burners to write copies of Microsoft products.
What a great virus idea. Just imagine hundreds of free copies of MS products popping up all over the place...oh wait, nevermind, too late.
Yeah, I just hate it when apple posts profits. Who do you think is getting that 29.95 for legal versions of quicktime pro? Apple would have absolutely no incentive to serve a highly popular file in mpg format.
that Lee isn't doing all his own stunts?
When you get a hd its listed capacity is always greater than the actual space you get after formatting. This has always been the way. OTOH if the pre-formatting spec is 5*10^9 bytes and not 5*2^30 bytes then apple has got some splainin to do.
Following recent stories: As we all know free progs like linux are just "hackers' toys" and according to new legislation hacking is terrorism punishable by life in prison without possibility of trial. Therefore it would only make sense to outlaw free software. Welcome to the mind of a politician.
This could also be due to a cement wall.
To Phil or anyone who knows:
If the governments make use of strong encryption illegal they need to enforce it by checking users' mail for signs of encryption. I know of some computationally easy tests that allow you to get a pretty good idea if a number is prime(ie Fermat). So my question is: do such tests exist for PGP-encrypted documents?
Letters must be exclusive to The Washington Post
Since the letter has already been published here (and most likely many other places by now) it does not meet the exclusivity(?) requirement and therefore would not be eligible for publication.Construx was a great toy and it had no fancy AI programability or motors
I had a construx motor, I think my parents bought it seperately. It had a number of connectors on it's surface and 2 motorised wheels on each side (1 large, 1 small). There was a 3 state controller attached by a roughly 18" cable. And yes, I immediately used it to create a robot (although for some reason bipedal construx robots don't walk very well). ...before Clipper was a gleam in Bush Senior's eye
Actually Bush never really took a shining to clipper. The US three letter agencies knew this and therefore didn't really try to push it through until Gore was VP. (Pardon my nitpicking)why not consider removing the doors to the cockpit of airplanes?
That works fine, until the pilot and copilot suddenly die of a heart attack and noone on board is able to save the plane. Sure it probably doesn't happen very often, but the first time it does everyone will cry foul.
We now have the army claiming P2P saves lives. Will the RIAA care? Will the MPAA care? Will the courts care? No. They didn't care about all the previous arguments in favour of P2P and they will be quick to dismiss this one. It doesn't matter how much good it does, if even 1 britney spears song gets through it threatens the economic balance of america.
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
By visiting this site, you are agreeing to our Terms of Service.
That's right the bottom. Thousands of /.ers have now agreed to a licence they've never seen. Ironic given the nature of the article
The simple fact is the IOC doesn't give a flying duck if a given substance is legal in a given country. In some events athletes are banned from taking cough syrup and aspirin. It also doesn't really care if they are performance enhancing (quick name an event that you would do better in if you were on weed).
an invitation for a holy war. Perhaps next we should have a 'what's your favorite editor?' debate.
Basic Number Theory:
There are 10 to the power of n different possible n digit long messages. A compression scheme needs to be able to map every possible message to another value. Assume this scheme produces an n-1 long compressed message. But there are only 10 to the power of (n-1) possible values of this length. Now any compressed msg would have to decompress to exactly 1 msg (would you want a program that gave you 30 different possible outputs?). That means that only 10% of messages can be compressed positively by any given scheme.
Schemes like LZW, Huffman etc. achieve positive compression only on certain very specific group of files with fairly predictable format(try compressing a DivX with winzip sometime if you don't believe me).
To think that some randomly chosen scheme would work well on any given input type is ludicrous at best.
---------------------------------------------
Try writting out every 2 digit sequence (00..99)
Done? You should have 200 digits down. Now if you wanted to send the msg "99" you would send 197. That's an extra digit. When you start doing this for arbitrary length expressions the losses are going to get even worse.
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